Economic Scenarios

Predicting Practical and Profitable Solutions

Economic scenarios represent alternative supply chain configurations for the AHB system. These can be distinct biofuel product markets, biomass resources, or feedstock logistics. Within these scenarios, sensitivity analysis will be performed with respect to yields, scales, prices, and costs.

The baseline scenario considers the supply of diesel fuel to fuel distribution terminals in the Northwest produced from hybrid poplar trees that are grown on bioenergy farms. The feedstock logistics assume a just-in-time harvest of the poplar. In the current iteration, the poplar yields are constant across space. As the project progresses, the yield variation from the poplar growth model will be included in the baseline.

Additional scenarios will include use of supplemental feedstock supplies from agricultural and forest residues, growth of poplar plantations on lands outside of current agricultural production, a depot preprocessing and storage model for feedstock logistics, and serving the jet and gasoline fuel markets.

Economic analysis will determine if biofuels can complete with fossil fuels.

This project is supported by an Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2011-68005-30407 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA).